Salvage Operation
by silvercistern
Summary: Because the people who save the world sometimes need to take a break and save themselves. A quest for a sword, involving copious amounts of meat, sarcasm, and the greatest earthbender in the world. T for now, with rating to change sometime in the future.
1. Prologue

_There were forty miles of uninterrupted Earth Kingdom coastline surrounding Wulong Forest, the site of the final battle of the Hundred Years War. _

_A battle that had pitched four children against hundreds of veteran Fire Nation soldiers and the Phoenix King himself. _

_A battle that the Fire Nation had lost._

_Songs had been sung, statues had been built, and the world was slowly healing as it tends to do, but Wulong Forest still bore the scars of battle. The woodlands had been blasted, seared by fires drawn from the comet itself. Towering over the fresh growth of new plants stood the blackened trunks of ancient trees, mirroring the stone forest behind. _

_In the five years that had passed, seven hurricanes and dozens of lesser storms had smashed into the shoreline, bringing up the flotsam and jetsam of war. The Wretched Coast, it was now called, an airship graveyard. The great machines jutted from the ever-changing sand, scorched metal skeletons carving the landscape into unsettling organic shapes._

_The new Fire Lord and the Avatar himself had worked to convince the Earth King to leave it as it was: a monument, both on land and under water, to the desolation of war. So no one could ever forget._

_But somewhere within the wreckage was another monument, a much smaller one, but a monument nonetheless. A monument to a young man's wit, courage, and commitment to become something bigger than himself. A monument to hard-learned humility. A monument to mastery of an art that belonged to no one nation._

_But its owner just called it Space Sword._

* * *

So, yeah. I've started a new story. In a new fandom. Hope you like. - essie


	2. Fruit Pies Aren't Gonna Make Themselves

The Avatar and his betrothed didn't fight very often.

Okay. That was a lie.

They hadn't _used_ to fight very often.

Now… well… _now_ they argued all the time. Daily, if Aang was being realistic, and almost always over the silliest little things. He never really even understood how the disagreements would start, but they frequently escalated, until Katara was shouting and unintentionally ragebending whatever liquids were in close proximity

If the Avatar was very honest, which he always tried to be, there was something incredibly gorgeous about his fiancée when she was furious. Her hair seemed to take on some kind of life of its own, and her eyes filled with blue fire. In those moments he could barely understand how such a primal force of nature had decided to end up with a goofy bald kid.

But there was something unquestionably terrifying about furious Katara too.

Neither made having any sort of rational disagreement with her terribly easy for the young man. Though Aang had spent many hours in meditative conversation with Kyoshi on the subject of poised assertiveness, boldly facing disputes head-on was much easier when the other party was a pompous Earth Kingdom official and not the woman you loved.

Needless to say, over the past few weeks the youngest fully-realized Avatar in history had spent a LOT of time hiding from the woman he was soon to marry.

And it was that very wedding that seemed to be the reason behind the growing lack of harmony in his household.

Well according to Zuko it was, anyway.

The Fire Lord happened to be both male and married, which gave him credibility. More importantly, he was _not_ Aang's soon-to-be brother- or father-in-law, unlike Sokka or Hakoda, which made him approachable. He also never fell asleep in the middle of conversations, unlike the sage proprietor of the Jasmine Dragon, which made conversations possible. So, for better or for worse, all of the Avatar's advice on women came straight from the Fire Nation Capital.

Zuko insisted that the stress of planning a wedding just… got to women. That even if they were the sort of people who didn't REALLY care about the minute details of what amounted to a ceremonial party, everybody else expected them to care a LOT. Brides were required to have opinions on pastries and sauces and candle size and tiny little flowers and lace patterns and different shades of red like they were actually _important_ or something. According to Zuko, who had himself stood by in shock while his future wife had pinned the royal wedding planner to a wall, that's all brides were ever asked about. It was stressful for any woman who didn't constantly obsess over those things to begin with to have her entire identity tied up in a single day.

The Fire Lord had also added leadingly that maybe, just maybe, the young waterbending master was a little nervous about being both the Avatar's wife, _and _future mother to an entire nation.

That especially had given Aang pause.

So when he came home to find Katara angrily trying to assemble what looked like the mushiest fruit pie he had ever seen, the airbender was nothing but supportive of her venture into a new aspect of the culinary arts. Fruit pies weren't exactly easy to make if you couldn't airbend, so he was really impressed that she had tried at all. He was always impressed by how willing she was to try new things just to preserve his culture, and he resolved to let her know just how deeply the appreciation went.

But Katara wasn't in the mood to listen to her own praises. Instead, she exploded in frustration, calling herself a backwards peasant who couldn't even learn to bake her fiancé's favorite dessert, and he might as well just find someone who could actually handle herself in the kitchen.

Of course Aang disagreed with her, vehemently. She was, after all, talking about the woman he loved, what else was he supposed to do? But he probably could have been a little more articulate in the way he went about it, because she turned on him almost immediately.

Not too surprising, really, coming from someone who had told the object of his dearest affections that kissing her would be marginally better than death.

So despite his most loving intentions to soothe the obviously beleagured spirit of the woman he adored, the situation devolved into a knock-down, drag-out fight that was quickly becoming one of their worst ones yet.

The only good thing about the afternoon seemed to be that no one was in the house to overhear.

* * *

"Are you just gonna sit there all day?" the sound of a familiar voice jolted the lanky young man out of his miserable reverie. "Not that I care about your feelings, but could you maybe have them somewhere else? I think Twinkletoes and Sugar Queen are gonna have a doozie of an argument in the kitchen and the spot that you're moping on happens to be the best seat in the place."

Sokka wrapped his arms around his shins, pulled his legs tighter against his chest, and pushed his chin even deeper into his knees. He'd been sitting in the garden of the Avatar's Ba Sing Se residence almost all morning. It was quiet, away from wedding planners and grumpy sisters and anxious avatars.

But now Toph was here and it wasn't quiet anymore.

The young woman next to him tapped her foot impatiently, likely expecting him to jump up and hug her or something that Normal Sokka would have done. But Normal Sokka wasn't here, only Miserable Sokka, and Miserable Sokka couldn't do much without making a complete fool of himself, so he didn't do anything at all.

The continuous motion of the small woman's foot created the tiniest of ripples on the ground underneath him. He glanced, well more like glared, really, at her, realizing in the process that it was the first time he'd seen the earthbender in over a year. Unfortunately she hadn't really arrived at the best of times.

Out of habit, he took inventory of the situation, though he avoided looking directly at her face for fear of some emotional outburst on his part. His friend's bare feet, calves, and shins were absolutely covered in dirt and splashes of mud, all different kinds, indicating a long journey. There was a long, half-healed laceration on the back of her left leg that looked like it had once been pretty ugly, indicating some sort of combat. The muscles in her legs were even more defined than they had been before, indicating some sort of training. She was wearing brown flowing trousers that hit her mid-shin, and a loose-fitting green dress-thingie. They were clean and actually quite nice, indicating some kind of effort on her part. A finely-made chain of some kind of lustrous brown metal was carelessly wrapped several times around the curve of her hips. That curve was one of several that had not really been there the last he remembered, and it distracted him from the chain altogether.

In general, she looked travel-worn, but cleaner and better-dressed than he was used to seeing.

He wasn't even certain what he was wearing, but he was sure he had slept in it.

"Look," she began again, trying a more reasonable approach, "when I stand here, I can sense and hear the whole kitchen, but Twinkletoes can't sense me. They won't even know I've shown up yet, but I can listen in." When Sokka didn't say anything, she threw up her hands in aggravation. "I need some kind of realistic memory to protect me against the constant soon-to-be-marital-bliss, otherwise this week is gonna be _unbearable_."

"You can't hear anything in the kitchen from here," he muttered into his knees. That was the whole reason he had chosen this place for his… whatever it was the he was doing, sitting in the garden and feeling sorry for himself, mostly.

"Maybe _you_ can't, Snoozles," the woman stomped the ground sharply, sending up a small wedge of earth that gently (_gently?_) brought him to his feet and forced him to take a giant step forward. Gliding into the place he had been sitting a moment before, she flashed him a lopsided grin, "But _I_ can."

"Okay, fine," he flopped to the ground again, resuming his previous seated position. "But you'd better tell me what they're saying."

Despite himself, he smiled into his knees, feeling just a little bit better than he had a moment before.

The woman shushed him and adjusted her head to the position most receptive to the faint sounds coming from the kitchen. They sat in companionable silence for awhile.

"Toph?"he worked hard to keep his voice from breaking.

"Yeah?"

His voice lacked its usual vim but he reached up and squeezed her hand.

"I missed you."

* * *

As abruptly it had started, the fight in the kitchen had ended. The conclusion had been unexpectedly spectacular, with the much-shorter waterbender grabbing the lapels of Aang's tunic and pulling his mouth down to hers. Kissing Katara was always wonderful, but immediately after an argument that had set the airbender's normally placid blood boiling with frustration, kissing became something else entirely.

He had just used a gust of air to blow everything off of the kitchen's work surface and was in the process of lowering Katara onto it when a familiar voice rang out across the large room, smashing the moment into a million pieces as though she had been waiting and listening for the perfect moment in which to do so.

"So, I know you two are busy and all, but before you get to repopulating the Air Nomads, can someone tell me what the deal is with Chief Tearbendy of the Mopey Tribe?"

Aang dropped Katara onto the work surface where she landed with a decidedly guttural "oooof." He looked up at his earthbending master. The young woman was leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, with what had to be the world's cockiest grin splashed across her face.

"Wow, Toph," he said through gritted teeth, "So glad to have you back."

"Eh, I guess I'll give you a minute," the young woman shrugged. She turned and glided across the stone floor and into the sitting room, arms behind her back, looking for all the world like a Dai Li agent.

Katara looked up at him, hair a dark halo around her flushed face. Her deep red, swollen lips pulled back into a grin that was unnervingly similar to the one Toph had just given him.

"Well, go on and tell her about it, sweetie. These fruit pies aren't going to make themselves."

As he stiffly made his way down the hall that led into the sitting room, the Avatar wondered if it were possible to bloodbend yourself. Probably that would end in nothing but regret. The thought alone was enough to send shivers up his spine, and it calmed him down considerably. Not that he could hide things from Toph anyway. He just hoped she had the decency to ignore his… situation.

She probably didn't.

The woman in question was lying on her back in the living room, as though five years had never passed and Ju Dee was about to show up at the door at any time, flashing an unnatural grin and scolding them about posting flyers. Just like old times, the earthbender's filthy feet were propped up on a rather ornate plush chair and she was humming to herself. A small attempt to give the other occupants of the house their privacy.

"That was quick," she smirked.

Aang rolled his eyes.

It was indicative of how distracted the earthbender was that she didn't take full advantage of the opportunity to mock her old student. Instead, she grew quiet, fingering the cuff on her upper arm, which looked markedly different than it had the last time he'd seen her. Whatever she'd been doing during her travels in the Fire Nation, it had certainly made her stronger. Her bicep and triceps were sculpted with new muscle, the cuff resting in the natural cleft between them. Aang took an extra heavy step and focused on the vibrations coming from the stone floor. In the year that she'd spent away, the once tiny girl had nearly doubled the size of her seismic imprint without seeming to take up any more space.

Knowing she would appreciate directness on the issue instead of small talk about her travels, Aang began with, "Suki left Sokka."

It didn't necessarily capture the intricate nuance of the situation, but it got the general point across.

The initial reaction of the young woman was so quick that almost anyone (other than the subject of their conversation) would have been likely to miss it. But Aang was not just anyone. If nothing else, his hours of mind-numbing meetings with Earth Kingdom, Water Tribe, and Fire Nation diplomats had made him an expert at quickly reading momentary facial expressions.

And for an instant, Toph's face had grown full of so much shocked hope that he felt secondary embarrassment. He was definitely not supposed to have seen that.

Her expression was quickly replaced with one of sympathetic surprise.

"Wow. I didn't expect that," she finally said. "Figured they were in it for the long haul. No wonder he's a wreck."

"I don't know exactly what happened, but Suki decided that she wants to live on Kyoshi when she isn't traveling with the warriors. And out of all of the places Sokka could or should end up, an isolated island is probably the last. She told him she couldn't ask him to come with her. Didn't really give him the choice."

"It was the right thing to do if she wanted to end it," Toph muttered. "He would have gone, even though it would have been stupid."

"He's been a mess ever since," Aang shrugged. He leapt onto the couch on a gust of air, and fell into a comfortable reclined position that mirrored Toph's on the floor. "I'm guessing you saw… er… met up with him while he was sitting in the garden? He does that a lot. Then some days he spends so much time at the forge that he falls asleep in his noodles at night. And there are days where he tries really hard to be normal. Makes so many bad jokes that Katara pretty much throws him out of the house…"

"Giving Fangirl a good beating probably wouldn't help much, hm?" the earthbender idly asked.

Aang was pretty sure Toph authentically liked Suki, if for no other reason than out of mutual respect. Both women were responsible for teaching very specialized, very rare styles of combat. Toph understood the pressure that the leader of the Kyoshi warriors felt because it was a burden she herself experienced.

There was also the matter of Suki saving Toph's life at the Serpent's Pass to be considered.

But Toph and Sokka had the sort of effortless bond that wasn't found in every lifetime. They understood each other in a way people around them couldn't hope to. When pressed, the earthbender was always going to pick the young water tribe man over pretty much everyone else.

In fact, if the Avatar wasn't certain that his old teacher would wrap him in a suit of metal, throw him into the nearest river, and cover him with a mountain of rocks, he'd say Toph had even had a little crush on his soon to be brother-in-law at some point or another, especially after the look he had just seen.

So, he feared for Suki, just a little bit.

"Probably not," he chuckled nervously, adding "Especially since she's _really _good at chi-blocking now," for good measure.

The earthbender propped herself up on one elbow, "It sounds like you're trying to convince me to head down there and take her out right now."

"Toph…" he sighed, realizing too late that the young woman would take a statement like that as a challenge.

"Oh fine," she huffed in acquiescence. "Snoozles probably wouldn't appreciate it anyway."

"I think he just needs time," the airbender said ponderously. He sat up, pulled his legs into the lotus position, and took a deep breath, as he usually did before beginning a lesson. "The monks used to say…"

"Save it, Twinkletoes," the young woman cut him off immediately then slouched back down onto the floor.

"W-w-well… Zuko said the same thing!" Aang sputtered, the flow of his speech completely destroyed. He was accustomed to his audience growing pensive and silent whenever he mentioned his people. It came from some sort of misplaced deference for the dead that Gyatso especially would have found hysterical, but Aang was used to it and took it for granted at this point.

"Said what?" Toph asked, bringing him back to the actual question at hand.

"That Sokka's going to be sad until he isn't. We just have to be here for him until that happens."

"Oh really?" the young woman pulled the black metal cuff off of her arm and began bending it into various shapes. "So how have you been here for him, exactly? Taking him to the tailor to get some fancy robes made for the wedding? Making him listen to you recite your vows? Asking him to give a speech?"

There was a long silence as Aang tried to remember what he had done for his friend, "Well… Katara's been making his favorite foods!" After a beat he added, much less enthusiastically, "We've had sea prunes for weeks…"

"Anything else?"

The Avatar gulped, trying to remember if he'd ever actually taken Sokka shopping like he'd planned to.

"I thought so. Maybe Sparky and the monks are right, and he needs time, but he needs it away from _Ài_ Sing Se."

Aang didn't know what 'Love Strong City' actually meant.

"That doesn't even make sense…" he began.

"Oh who cares? The point is, this entire city is going _crazy_ with wedding fever. The whole rotten ferry ride over, that's all anyone was talking about. I bet there are decorations everywhere, right? Water Tribe and Air Nomad stuff? Pictures of you and Sweetness? Hearts?"

"Well… yeah."

"How's he supposed to move on if everywhere he goes he's reminded of the Romance of the Century?"

"They're really calling it that?" Aang blushed and scratched the back of his neck.

"You _are_ a hundred and eighteen years old," a new voice chimed in from the entryway to the hall. Katara was back, covered in flour and bits of fruit paste, but much more cheerful

"Hey Sweetness," Toph called from the floor.

The Water Tribe woman crossed the room and knelt at her friend's side, yanking her up by the arm and into a crushing hug. "It's so good to see you, Toph! You have to tell me everything you've been up to! We've been stuck in this city for months!"

"Well," the smaller woman said into her friend's shoulder. "I've been in a Fire Nation prison. That was fun."

"What?" Katara's eye twitched as she immediately let her go. "Do I even want to know?"

Toph grinned. "I wasn't an inmate. More like… a visiting student. Had a little heart-to-heart with some of the less malicious members of the Dai Li." She stood and leaned back, cracking her fingers and then her back noisily. "Learned a few tricks in exchange for their early parole."

The waterbender crossed her arms, "I really don't think it's a good idea, them being let out. For their own safety, really. They were traitors to the entire Earth Kingdom."

"They can't come back to the Earth Kingdom," Aang jumped in. "But Zuko was always open to the idea of their staying in the Fire Nation after their sentences were over. Under supervision, of course. Strictly no combative bending or the Avatar lays the smackdown."

"Oh," Katara blinked slowly, very clearly annoyed that no one had thought to share this information with her until this moment.

"We uh… talked about it the day you were getting initiated into the White Lotus, sweetie," the Avatar was quick to reassure her.

"Anyway, I learned how to do this," with the smallest of stomps, Toph rocketed herself upwards. She landed at the highest point on the stone wall and clung there like a spider. She also managed to knock down several wall hangings in the process, but it didn't seem to bother her too much.

"Whoa," Aang whistled appreciatively, while Katara's nostrils flared at what looked to be only the beginning of rampant destruction of property that no one was likely to clean up but her.

The earthbender let go and divested herself of a particularly mundane piece of calligraphy that had wrapped itself around her leg, "The Dai Li used those stone gloves to do it, but I don't need anything like that. They also did a lot with long chains and momentum. Someone who could, say, bend metal, really has a lot of options with that sort of style," she grinned for a moment, extremely pleased with herself, then deflated rather spectacularly. "At least, they would if the stupid chains didn't break so easy."

"You should talk to Sokka about that!" Katara burst out, almost maniacally excited by the idea. "I bet he could make some kind of design that would work better. And it would distract him from being so..."

"Maudlin?" Toph offered.

"Heartbroken?" the Avatar sighed.

"I was going to just say crazy," Katara laughed just a little bit too heartily, "but I've been putting up with it for three months. My sympathy just isn't infinite, you know? I don't even know how to help! What with this wedding, and half the city of Ba Sing Se up my–"

"Hey there, Snoozles," the earthbender interrupted loudly as the man in question reached what she assumed was hearing distance in the hall.

"Hey guys," Sokka said halfheartedly, lifting his hand in a little wave. He picked up his well-worn green and yellow bag and hefted it across his shoulders. Crossing to the door, he turned and said briefly, "I'm going out for awhile."

"Make sure you come back for dinner!" Katara called after him, her voice excessively cheerful. "I'm making arctic hen _and_ stewed sea prunes!"

Aang groaned into his hands.

* * *

The ground-level guest room in the Avatar's house in Ba Sing Se really wasn't a guest room at all, since the only person who ever stayed there was Toph. Though she could navigate almost any terrain, even indoors with confidence, the woman still preferred the layout of the places where she was going to sleep to remain static if possible. She also preferred sleeping on the floor, which was difficult to do when there were large beds taking up space.

Katara was the sort of person who could figure all of this out without even asking, so the room on the ground floor was always the same, sparse with only a dresser and a nice hard mat for the earthbender to sleep on.

She was sitting on the mat now, picking her feet after the long journey across the Fire Nation and the truly awful ferry ride that had followed. The earth there was different, full of tiny shards of volcanic glass and small fragments of a very crunchy sort of rock that was so full of holes that, talk was, it floated in water. She had gotten used to the different texture on her feet, just like she had during the war, but there were still some tiny cuts that were taking forever to heal due to the constant abuse of walking on them.

Then there was the long chain-slash on her legnfrom the accident that had come _this_ close to taking her thigh muscle off. She'd been experimenting in metalbending with the Dai Li's chain weapons, but her bending and physical strength combined had proven to be stronger than the chains were themselves. In the middle of a particularly vigorous attempt to use the chain as an extension of her arm, a link had snapped. The weapon had whipped in two different directions, and Toph had lost track of half of it as it flew erratically through the air. At least, until the slashing pain had suddenly shot through her leg.

For obvious reasons the Fire Nation didn't really have many Water Tribe healers, so it was likely that she was always going to have what she had been told was a rather ugly scar. But Toph liked the feel of it, the raised, extra slippery skin skimming across the curve of her muscle, so she didn't mind at all. Mai had told her it made her look like a badass, which had seemed like rare praise.

After that incident, the Fire Lady's own bladesmith had worked to create a new chain, both light and flexible, that could handle the demands of the metalbender's maneuvering. She was told that her new weapon was a strange brown color, the color of earth itself. But if colors were anything like smells, Toph figured that earth had a lot of different ones, and the metalworker had just been trying to be poetic. But the chain _was_ stronger (though probably not quite as strong as she'd like) and light enough to carry on her at all times, although unwrapping it initially tended to take more time than was acceptable during a real fight.

The one bright light in the undoubtedly hoity-toity spectacle that was to be the Avatar's wedding had been the thought of seeing Sokka after so much time away. She had figured that the self-proclaimed Plan Guy could work with her to solve her chain dilemma. And she had missed him, kinda. Just a little.

But the Plan Guy was now apparently the Sits-In-The-Garden-And-Pouts Guy, no thanks to Suki. Despite telling him the exact opposite, Toph was actually very concerned for her friend's feelings. But feelings or not, miserable Sokka had to go. She had some ideas on how to cheer him up, but they all seemed crazy and most would completely ruin Aang and Katara's wedding, something even she was not looking to do.

"It's your house, Sugar Queen!" she called to the door, behind which the bride-to-be had been hovering for the past sixty seconds. She had been indecisively lifting her hand to knock, and then stopping just short of knocking over and over.

The waterbender opened the door and closed it softly behind her. Her voice was an octave higher than normal, "Oh, I was just checking to see if you needed anything…"

"You're lying."

Katara sighed, and slumped her shoulders as though she had just been doused by one of her own waves. "You're right, I am. I just… wanted to talk to you. It's been so long… and I've just been _here_, you know… and this wedding… and _Sokka_ and…"

Toph was surprised. Though she considered the Water Tribe woman one of her closest friends, heart to hearts between the two of them had always been very circumstantial. By that she meant, usually they started as physical fights.. The younger girl had never really been someone that Katara came to for advice, though she seemed to be doing so now. The earthbender wondered if it was out of pure desperation.

"So talk," she shrugged, falling back on her mat and in the process bending a small earthen stool for her friend to sit on. Foot picking would have to wait.

Katara's voice cracked, as though she had been holding in a flood of words for weeks.

"This wedding feels like a nightmare! Everyone expects things from us, just everyone, because the Avatar belongs to the whole world, and when I say, "us" I mean _me _because they refuse to allow him to be involved in the process, even when he insists! There isn't a single day that goes by when the planners aren't at my doorstep, harassing me about another 'important detail' that I have to resolve. I haven't been able to train in weeks, and _forget_ about having any students. My life is nothing but wedding, and I _HATE IT._"

At her final words, the tea from a delicate cup the earthbender had been drinking from splashed high into the air and then down to the floor in a mini cascade. The woman bent the water back into the cup as though indiscriminate rage-bending had become a common occurrence for her.

"So… if it bugs you so much, why are you having a wedding this huge?" Toph asked. "Honestly, it seems like a nightmare even without the crazy planners."

Katara sighed, dropping her head into her hands, "Because Aang wants one. Not for himself, oh no, he feels like he owes it to the _world_. That he's run away enough, and he wants everyone to know how committed he is. To me, apparently, which is sweet, or at least it _would_ be if it weren't so _completely_ impractical. But regardless it's happening, and I agreed to it ages ago and I can't go back on it now because I love him and I do want to get married."

The woman's voice became more and more impassioned as she slowly worked herself into a frenzy. "So everyone in the four nations is invited to our wedding. Which, of course, means it has to be in the biggest city on the planet, instead of back home because no other place is large enough to hold _that_ _many_ **_people_**!"

"Is that they way the monks did it?" Toph raised her eyebrow, pretty sure it wasn't, but secretly relieved that she wasn't required to go to the one place on earth she was certain to be completely sightless.

"Air Nomads never even _got _married!" Katara almost shrieked, her heartbeat louder than an airship engine.

There was a long silence as one woman calmed herself down and the other tried to figure out how that sort of a society even worked.

"They just… you know, were with someone until they didn't want to be anymore," Katara finally explained. "Sometimes it lasted for years, even lifetimes. Other times, just... ehm... single encounters."

"Really?" Toph exclaimed. "Sweet!"

"I know!" Katara unexpectedly agreed. "There's just something really… romantic, about two people staying together just because they _love _each other, not because their society expects them to."

"Uh… yeah!"

Toph had actually been commenting on the freedom to do whatever you please, but she was surprised to find herself also agreeing with her much more sentimental friend. She was all about people doing whatever they wanted.

"But I understand why he's doing this," Katara sighed in resignation. "He feels like it's his duty. And I haven't really told him how much this all is getting to me."

"Sweetness, I'm pretty sure he knows at this point, he just doesn't know how to fix it."

"Wait, he does?" Katara's heart skipped a beat, then starting thumping faster than ever.

"I mean, he's kind of an idiot sometimes, but not _that _much of an idiot," Toph found it difficult to believe how stupid love seemed to be making people who had at one point _saved the world_. "You're obviously stressed, and you can't do any of the things you like because of wedding-this and wedding-that. And I doubt that was your first fight in awhile..."

Katara laughed quietly, "I guess when you put it that way…"

The earthbender really didn't know what to say so she just went with the blatantly obvious, "I mean, you can't do much about what's going on, right? Whatever you two would rather have, this is the way your wedding is going to be. So just stop worrying about it."

Katara barked out a scornful laugh, "Yeah, of course! Sure! Stop worrying! Let the planners do whatever they want and just forget about the… whoooole… thhhiinng…"

The earthbender felt her friend's heartbeat accelerate, as the woman grew suddenly excited, and she wondered if she should be worried for Katara's health under this kind of cardiac strain.

"Toph you're a genius!"

"I… am?"

"All that matters to me is that I get to marry Aang and the people we care about are there with us, right? All this other stuff? The dresses and the candles and the music and the million other things? I don't _care about that_. So why _am _I worried about it?"

"Sounds like a good question to me."

"I don't _need_ to worry about it! I don't know why I didn't just see this before! When these Earth Kingdom _snobs_… no offense…"

"None taken," Toph shrugged.

"Well when they're harassing me over all these silly details, I can just pick anything they offer at random! I don't have to agonize over every decision. It does NOT matter what I pick. Because I don't care!"

Katara was jumping around the room, laughing not unlike someone who had completely lost her mind.

"The joke's on them! I _don't_ care! It doesn't matter!"

Toph felt the waterbender slide across the floor, pulling her into another one of her hugs, and kissing her on the cheek. "I am _so _glad you're back," her friend said happily, then jumped into a standing position as if the myriad of other things that she regularly worried over had suddenly come into focus in the absence of wedding stress. "I should probably go finish dinner and let you get settled in."

Toph had no real idea how her words had been a sudden revelation, so she figured that Katara's stress had just reached the breaking point all on its own.

When she reached the door, the woman turned back to her and added, as though an afterthought, "You're going to spend some time with Sokka, right? He really needs some cheering up, and…" her words grew thick and sticky, coated with regret, "honestly, I don't think hanging around with Aang and I helps at _all_."

"Yeah," Toph said carelessly. "We're going to run away, actually."

Katara laughed as she closed the door, "Oh Toph. We really missed your jokes around here."

But as the door closed, the earthbender began to think that what had started as a joke was really a quite brilliant idea in disguise.


	3. Quite the Miraculous Wit

Weddings were the worst.

Especially the kind whose guest list included your ex-girlfriend.

And not the sweet, tragic one who had turned into the moon, either.

He was standing in the largest garden on the grounds of the Earth Kingdom palace. Sad garden contemplation was his thing now, he guessed. Unlike the smaller garden at Aang's house, this one had a stream and a pond and a delicate stone bridge. It was really pretty nice, especially during the full moon. But he was just about out of any sort of reserves of positivity, so it felt empty and sad and exhausting.

It wasn't though he had been faking his happiness at the wedding itself. He'd actually enjoyed quite a few moments of genuine bliss, forgetting all about the reason for his past three months of misery. He had laughed and cried at all the appropriate times. He had given what he humbly considered the best toast in the history of marriage. He had eaten more food than the Southern Water Tribe as a whole consumed in a week. He had danced with his sister. He had danced with Mai and Smellerbee and Gran Gran and pretty much every other woman who wasn't a Kyoshi Warrior. He had even danced with Zuko, though at this point his reasoning behind that choice was a bit unclear.

In general, he had made jokes and acted enough like Normal Sokka to please everyone in attendance, even himself.

And now, duty as brother-of-the-bride thus completed, he had retired to the garden with a clay bottle of Kuei's finest sake to drink old girlfriends and weddings and happiness, real or otherwise, into oblivion.

It was bad enough that Suki was there, but the fact that she and the rest of the Kyoshi Warriors were the Avatar's honor guard made it even worse. Everywhere he turned he saw dark green kimonos covered with black armored plates. With the nearly identical uniforms, he instinctively assumed that everyone in dark green was the one person he both desperately wanted to see and was aggressively avoiding.

His heart had jumped into his throat every two minutes.

Suki just had this habit of taking him by surprise.

It'd started the minute they'd met really: a _girl _kicking his butt to make him look like total idiot, and then _kissing_ him, as though she liked him, which had been confusing at best. After that, well, Yue had happened, and in his grief he'd basically forgotten that Suki even existed. Then all of the sudden, there she was at the crossing to the Earth Kingdom, all assertive with her feelings and taking him completely off his guard all over again.

But women in his life tended not to stick around, so it wasn't a huge shocker when she'd gone back to her warriors. There hadn't been time for romance, anyway and he'd poured his all into getting Aang to the Fire Nation for the Day of Black Sun.

Everybody knew how well _that _had gone.

But after, when he was at his lowest, losing hope of ever finding his father, let alone winning the war, she had just… _been there_ at Boiling Rock, like she'd been waiting for him all along. It had all been so completely coincidental, running into a girl you had a _thing _with in the middle of the highest security Fire Nation prison, that it seemed to mean something. He didn't believe in things like fate or destiny, no matter what Gran Gran said, but the girl just kept _coming back _when he thought she was lost for good.

On the day of Sozin's Comet, nothing had mattered but the mission. Every action had echoed with finality. They'd said their goodbyes the night before. The kind you couldn't take back. There was a tacit understanding between them to protect Toph no matter what. If Aang failed, the Earth Kingdom needed someone who could teach its benders how to destroy the metal airships with nothing but their hands.

Well, they needed the world's only metalbender if there was anyone left in the Earth Kingdom to learn after Ozai had burned most of them to a crisp.

And then, for a third time, he and Suki had been separated. Despite his best efforts, Toph had been on the verge of falling into the unforgiving sea. He could still feel her fingers, desperate and rough, pulling against his, her whole arm trembling from the strain. It was Yue all over again. He was unable to protect the one thing he had sworn to keep safe.

Until Suki had come back, flying through the air with a beautiful smile on her face, smashing the airship that he'd thought would be his tomb into a thousand pieces.

She really was full of surprises.

But three months ago, in another one of these stupid Earth Kingdom gardens, she had surprised him again.

It hurt so much to remember, but he couldn't stop. It was like scratching a deep itch until it bled.

_"Sokka, I love you. I always will. But I love Kyoshi more," the warrior looked him in the eyes as she spoke. Her gaze was steady and direct and her posture was strong but relaxed. It was only the quaver in her voice that implied she was feeling any sort of emotion at all. "The more the world changes, the more I see that," she continued. "I have a duty to my warriors, and to my people. It's where I belong. More than that, it's where I want to be. It's where I want to grow old, to raise a family."_

_Yue was shining brightly on the garden, bathing the world in her pale light. The night smelled like honeysuckle. The gentle sound of crickets and the droning bongs of the Air Nomad wind chimes filled the air. Suki looked heartbreakingly beautiful in the delicate blue gown she had worn to Kuei's solstice ball. _

_Appropriate, since she was currently in the process of breaking his heart._

_"We both know that's not what you want, Sokka." _

_The rest of the conversation was a blur. He could, he swore he would go with her, forget about all of it, Yu Dao and the new world Aang was trying to build and everything else if she'd just let him come with her, but Suki just smiled sadly and touched his hand. They'd been growing apart for months, maybe even years, hadn't he seen it? They wanted very different things. It was better this way, to part as friends, to remember their time together happily. Their love had been something beautiful, but she had her duty, he had his, and now those duties were separating for good._

_"I'm a girl, but I'm a warrior, too," she said softly, and then kissed his cheek. _

_He didn't know what that meant, but it hurt too much to try and figure out. _

_She left for Kyoshi the next day. _

_And this time he knew she wasn't coming back._

"Sokka?"

It was the smack on the back of his head, not the real-life person asking a real-life question possibly for quite some time, that jerked him out of his own memory. Probably for the best. He'd relived it so many times he was probably reciting his own breakup in his sleep.

Zuko yanked the sake bottle away from the Water Tribe man with one hand and with the other he bent a small flame. Bringing the bottle close, the Fire Lord squinted to read the imprint on the wax seal. After a frown and a grunt of distaste, the small flame burst into a flash that very briefly enveloped the entire bottle before it went out completely. Sokka made a noise of protest, but he was ignored. Zuko ducked down to the foot of the bridge, reached out his long arm to dip the bottle in the cool water, then pulled it back up and brought it to his lips.

"This is gonna be better hot," was all he said.

Sokka grabbed for the bottle, which he brandished with a sweeping gesture.

"Well excuuuuse me, Your Flameyness, but where I come from, we like things cold. Especially in the summer. Which it is. Now."

Zuko shrugged, "But it wasn't even cold. Just kind of lukewarm. Also I think you grabbed the cheap stuff they use for cooking. That stuff is disgusting if you don't warm it up."

"Sure whatever," the Water Tribe man grumbled, throwing back the bottle for another swig. He had been spending way too much time thinking, and not nearly enough drinking. His little trip down memory lane proved that brain could still form coherent thoughts, which was unacceptable.

After swallowing he jerked his head back in surprise and started blinking rapidly. His companion had crossed his arms and was glaring at him expectantly.

"Actually," Sokka admitted with as much gravitas as he could muster, "this is significantly better."

Zuko raised his eyebrow.

"So what brings you out here, Your Majesty?" he redirected. "Katara send you to cheer up her poor, miserable brother? I gotta say, she's scraping the bottom of the barrel if she figured you'd do the job."

"She could have sent Mai," the corners of the firebender's mouth turned upwards, just the tiniest bit.

Mid-swig, Sokka burst into laughter, spraying sake all over his companion.

"Okay, okay," he admitted to his now-dripping friend, "that was pretty funny."

"Katara didn't send me," Zuko, who was not at all amused, began while shaking the booze out of the long, belled sleeve of his royal robes. "She is…" he paused and then looked extremely uncomfortable, "well… I don't think either of us really wants to know exactly what your sister is up to right now…"

Sokka, who most definitely didn't, shuddered and made a sour face.

"Yeeeahhh," the Fire Lord agreed. "Anyway, I was hoping you could come and… uh… extradite Toph from an awkward situation. I'd do it, but I'm afraid it'd start an international incident."

"Toph? Awkward situation?" the young man barked out a laugh as he sat the bottle on the edge of the bridge's railing. "Take it from me, Zuko, she can handle it herself. She doesn't care about awkward at _all._"

"I don't think she's used to this kind of awkward," the firebender rubbed the back of his neck, feeling extremely awkward himself. "See, there's this guy… well actually, there are several–"

"A… _guy_?" Sokka interrupted him ponderously, the thought of guys and Toph in any kind of situation together having never crossed his mind before. There had been that _one _kid, like, forever ago, but since then Toph had seemed pretty happy rolling through the world by herself. After consideration, he shook his head, the answer obvious. "So… she just earthbends him into the floor. She's done it to _me_ enough times. Unless Bumi's trying to convince her to dance, I think she's probably okay. He's the only bender here who can take her, no offense."

"King Bumi is drunk in a corner somewhere, telling jokes to my sleeping uncle," Zuko said. "And, none taken." He thought for a moment. "Aang could beat her, maybe, but he'd have to go into the Avatar State to do it. Maybe my sister…"

Sokka was fairly uninterested in discussing the long list of all of the different benders Toph could beat in a fight, and he _really _didn't want to talk about Azula.

"Soooo, she just bends the guy away, goes back to… you know… whatever it is that she's been doing this whole wedding," he said dismissively, realizing in the process of talking that he actually had no idea. What Toph had been doing during the wedding, that is. They'd been sitting at the same table, basically right next to each other, but he had no clue who she'd spent the evening talking to, only that it _hadn't_ been him. It was kind of insulting, when he thought about it. Come to think of it, she hadn't really spent any time with him since her return. Was she _ignoring _him?

Worse yet, was he somehow ignoring her by accident? It wasn't as though he'd sought her out, being too caught up in his own misery. He hadn't even danced with her yet, and he had made a firm commitment to dance with everyone.

He turned towards the palace, knocking the bottle off the railing and onto the bridge, where it miraculously didn't shatter. Instead it rolled down to the other side, spilling sake everywhere. Displaying a commitment to hot beverages that would make his uncle proud, Zuko chased after it.

"First off," the fire bender shouted called out over his shoulder, "If you'd been paying any attention you'd know that Toph promised not to bend unless it was absolutely necessary. The Earth King was nervous about her destroying his palace again or something. So she's stuck trying to talk her way out of the amorous attentions of what seems like every available man in the entire Earth Kingdom, not to mention the Northern AND Southern Water Tribes. I think the Fire Nation citizens are too terrified to do anything other than stare, but they sure are staring."

"Did she start picking…" Sokka trailed off, still staring at the palace and feeling more than a little guilty.

"They don't even _notice_ when she picks her nose!" Zuko exploded, his patience at an end. "Or if they do, they don't care! If you weren't such an _idiot_, you'd notice she's become _extremely_…"

But as the Fire Lord turned, he found himself talking to no one as the Water Tribe man was out of earshot, stomping heavily toward the Earth Kingdom palace.

"…beautiful," Zuko told no one in particular. He shrugged and then threw back what remained of the sake with a satisfied sigh.

* * *

_Weddings are amazing!_ was the last thing Katara found herself thinking before she became incapable of any more rational consideration.

For her part, she was probably right.

* * *

Weddings were the worst.

Especially fancy ones in the palaces of Earth Kings who demanded their guests not metalbend unwanted... what was she supposed to even call them? Suitors?... to the wall.

It wasn't that she didn't appreciate getting a little attention. Toph didn't really have a problem with attention. In fact, you might even say she loved it. The cheers of an Earth Rumble crowd after a particularly well-executed finishing move. The gasps of Yu Dao bystanders as she grabbed lawbreakers around the ankle with claws made of metal and dragged them into the ground. The awed silence of her students as she bent iron bars into delicate lace patterns that she couldn't technically even see. The accolades of world rulers... respect from the common man... praise from her friends…

She ate it all up.

But she did _not _like stuffy men throwing themselves at her, sloppily kissing her hand, asking her to dance and not taking no for an answer.

Normally this wasn't a problem. She could easily avoid them with her tried and true excuse of, "Does it _look_ like the blind girl can dance?" No one ever argued with that.

But she couldn't this time because unfortunately her cover was blown.

Toph could dance. She could dance well, and what's more, she'd been able to do so for the past twelve years. Even though her parents hadn't exactly been eager to reveal her existence her to anyone, they had needed to be certain that if word somehow got out that the Bei-fong family _had _a daughter, that she was a daughter worth having. They'd expected to raise someone who could hold her own in high society, and taught their daughter as much.

They'd ended up with a dirty, spitting, earthbending champion, who had managed to turn the world upside-down in more ways than one. Regardless, despite the hundreds of victories Toph Bei-fong had under her belt, she had _never_ forgotten how to dance. It wasn't that much different from earthbending, really, as long as she stayed on the ground, and she couldn't exactly un-learn it.

When Iroh had insisted she cut a rug with him, she'd thought "Why not?" It had been unexpected fun, actually. The Dragon of the West really knew how to show a lady a good time on the dance floor, probably from all of those years being the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation. She'd had no complaints about that.

The problem had begun after the old man had done himself proud and retired into a corner with his tea. That's when the line of eager partners had started forming.

_"Oh, Miss Bei-fong, you're such an exquisite dancer." _

_"Miss Bei-fong, you are as beautiful as you are accomplished."_

_"Might you do me the honor of allowing me to kiss the delicate hand that invented metalbending?"_

And on and on and on. There had been moments, wonderful ones, when Aang, giddy with joy, had demanded her presence for a toast or a hug or a dance. She had realized, with just a small blow to her pride, that it was pretty much impossible for a blind earthbender to keep up with a fancy-dancing Air Nomad, especially on his wedding day. Regardless she had enjoyed herself away from the line of men who were dead set on dancing with her, no matter how often she insulted them.

"_Oh Miss Bei-fong, you do have quite the miraculous wit_," they would titter.

Yes, titter.

It was pathetic. More importantly, it was wasting time and she had plans. Plans that required actual action, before a certain someone was so drunk she'd have to carry him to take him anywhere. She was so nervous about getting everything right that she'd avoided her target for the entire evening. Thankfully he seemed to be getting on all right without her to cheer him up, but he'd disappeared now, and she was left in a bit of a situation.

They were surrounding her now, all of their eager feet blurring her sense of place. Most had either horrible breath or wore too much cologne, so she couldn't even _smell _right. In all of this chaos, and without the ability to defend herself in the way she best knew how, she didn't have the focus to figure out how to make them go away without actually breaking their arms. When one put his arm around her waist and whispered an address in her ear, she had decided to earthbend them all into the Middle Ring of the City, promises to Katara be damned.

And then Snoozles was _finally_ there.

She felt him before he spoke. Not his seismic imprint, though she felt that too when the hundreds of feet in the ballroom slowed for a moment. But it was more than that. Certain people, ones she knew well, had specific… signatures about them, and when they came close, she could tell exactly who they were.

It wasn't any sort of _magic_. Just memorized combinations of sound and scent and presence that sighted people probably experienced just the same, if they'd take the time to notice. Having eyes that worked, for all of their colors and lights and other things that Toph understood herself to be missing out on, seemed distracting from the real sensations of life and living. She was told everyone's eyes were different, unique only to them, but she doubted that the patterns in the two small balls of jelly on everyone's faces could compare to the way she experienced the most significant people in her life.

Katara was like a warm rain in the chill of spring while Aang was constantly wrapped in a cool autumn breeze. Her movements were languid while his were so light as to nearly go unnoticed, but when they were together they were always in sync, even their stupid, sappy hearts.

She could feel the sun on her face in midsummer summer whenever Zuko came close, while his uncle would forever smell of the burning kindling he had used to heat the tea on their first meeting. Azula, whom Toph had grown to recognize out of an entirely different sense of importance, reeked of ozone. Whenever she was near, even if the situation was not at all threatening, the hairs on the back of the earthbender's neck stood up as though lightning were about to strike. The Earth Rumble fighters each smelled like their own blood, since it had sprayed across the arena often enough for her to memorize it. Their bending felt different too, different frequencies of vibration she guessed, and she could tell the Boulder from the Hippo even if her feet weren't on the ground.

Toph was very against being unnecessarily poetic, talking around things instead of just getting to the point. She supposed that benders all brought their elements with them inadvertently and she really couldn't help but pick up on personal differences. It wasn't like she could feel their chi or something dumb like that. Again, anyone who saw could probably do it, if they just took the time to focus on something other than what their eyes saw.

Nonbenders like Mai and Suki and Ty Lee were equally identifiable, though they didn't reek of elements. The three women in particular were all light on their feet in slightly different ways, none like Aang, who seemed to float, but more like dancers, real ones. Now that Toph had lived a little more outside of Gaoling, she could tell the difference between an airbender and an acrobat, even if there was only one of the former.

Suki was always in motion, pulling her momentum forward the way waterbenders manipulated their element. She smelled very faintly of cherry blossoms, as though the scent was part of a morning routine and then otherwise forgotten. Ty Lee, for as delicate as she seemed, was constantly winding and unwinding like a spring. Her movements, even the most leisurely ones, were singularly intentional and overwhelmingly powerful. She smelled like rosewater. Often like _too much _rosewater. Mai was unpredictable and moved in explosive bursts, able to go from a standstill to a dead run in an instant. Most of the time, though, her body was languid and relaxed. She always smelled of the oil that she used to clean her knives. Toph was rather fond of the scent.

But no one was quite like Sokka, whose associated sensations were so abstract at this point as to be somewhat difficult to capture in words even more flowery and ridiculous than what she had to use to describe her friends. It wasn't a big deal or anything that he was so singular in her mind. They got along really well, he was her best friend, basically, and they had come _this_ close to dying together, so why wouldn't she know him by heart? Yeah, she had had a crush on him once, when she was _twelve_ but that was long over, Suki or no Suki.

Right now she was just very, very happy that he had finally shown up.

"I'd like to thank you, gentlemen," he addressed the men who surrounded her with a deep bow. She could feel his heart jump and knew whatever he was about to say next was an outright lie. "I do appreciate that you didn't allow my lovely fiancée," he put his arm around her waist and drew her possessively close to him, "to grow too bored in my absence. But now," he grasped her hand, relaxed his hold on her waist, and twirled her away from the men, "I do believe I owe the lady a dance."

"See ya boys," she called out over her shoulder before he whipped her towards the floor once again.

The earthbender had felt her friend dancing with numerous people earlier in the evening. One of those people had been Zuko, and she didn't think she had ever heard Mai laugh quite as hard as she had then. He had also danced with his sister quite a few times, and his grandmother, and the Fire Lady herself and a lot of other girls that Toph didn't even know. During those proceedings, something had become abundantly clear.

Sokka was a horrible dancer.

At least by Earth Kingdom standards. She didn't really know how they danced in the Southern Water Tribe, but she figured Sokka had probably never learned to dance there either. Even if he had, and Water Tribe dancing just happened to be very bizarre, he was at a disadvantage trying to translate that into the formal ballroom dances of the Earth Kingdom. Unlike his sister, who had her waterbending forms to fall back on, Sokka had nothing but his enthusiasm and energy, which basically translated into chaos.

Now he was dragging her across the floor like it was a Fire Nation airship and the world was going to end if they didn't dance right now. He smelled of alcohol, but not nearly enough to be actually drunk, which was a relief. She needed to make her move soon, but she couldn't talk to him if he was busy throwing her all over the place.

"Where's the fire, Snoozles, or should I say, _Honey_?" she asked, voice strained since he was in the process of pulling out her arm.

"Come along now, _Darling_," he insisted. He was trying to joke, but his joking voice was all wrong and she knew he didn't actually feel cheerful at all.

"Now that you've rescued me from the Sloppy Hand Kissing Gang, we don't actually have to dance, you know," she stopped moving altogether, digging her feet into the ground so they came to a halt.

It wasn't technically bending if property wasn't destroyed.

He spun around completely, grabbing her by the shoulders, and shaking her just a little bit. His heart was racing and she could smell the fruity vanilla scent of sake on his breath.

"Toph Bei-fong!" he squawked, "You and I are going to _dance_, and you are going to _like_ it, or, so help me I will stop this _entire _wedding!"

And based on the abrupt halt in all vibrations through the floor, he had done just that.

* * *

"Weddings… are… amazing…" Aang gasped into the pillow, as he collapsed onto the sheets.

"So are you, sweetie," Katara exhaled, blowing strands of her hair out of her face. Her eyes were hazy, but her grin was too feral to ignore.

So he didn't.

* * *

"Weddings are the worst," they said at the same time, both very aware that everyone still sober enough to care was staring at them.

He figured everyone thought Toph looked utterly humiliated, head tilted down as though her eyes were fixed on some point on the ground. But her shoulders were squared, as usual, so he knew she was mostly if not completely all right. He made a face at the onlookers, hoping they'd go back to whatever it was they'd been doing before, then turned back to his friend.

She was in was a dress, the kind he had never seen her in before. It was lovely and made her look really delicate, which he wasn't really used to. It was probably because the fabric was wispy, sort of like a cloud or something.

But a green cloud. Or, maybe, a white cloud over a green sky. Kind of like her eyes…

Anyway, he knew Toph was tiny, though her bravado always made her seem… bigger somehow. But this dress was drawing attention to just how small-boned she actually was. It was also drawing attention to the curves she had managed to pick up in the Fire Nation. He didn't appreciate it when people stopped looking the way they were supposed to. Maybe it was the sake, but he felt sort of dazed.

"You look really great," he finally said dumbly, at long last grasping exactly what it was that Zuko had been trying to tell him outside.

"You smell like cheap booze and sound like a crazy person," she shrugged, "but I'm sure you look really nice."

"Will you just dance with me, already?" he whined, whatever pensive mood her weird dress had put him in completely over with. The situation was not at all going the way he had hoped. There was no excessive gratitude for saving her from a bunch of boring guys. For reasons unknown he'd expected the kind of raw appreciation that made him feel better about himself, though he supposed even Toph's insults were marginally more enjoyable than sighing to himself in the garden.

"Only if you promise not to swing me around like a water whip," she said to some point over his left shoulder. She was wearing makeup, just a tiny bit, but it was a little smeared underneath her eyes, making them look smoky.

"I am a great dancer!" the affront hit close to home. "Ask pretty much any lady here! Or even Zuko!"

"Whatever. Just do what everyone else is doing," she ordered. "No freestyle."

"How are _you_ supposed to tell what everyone else is doing?" he demanded, realizing immediately afterward how rude it was, but not particularly caring at the moment.

"Maybe, because unlike some people here, I actually know how to dance," she shrugged with a smirk.

Sokka glared at her, receiving no response whatsoever. It was occasionally annoying to have a friend who couldn't see your irritated face.

Not like Toph would care, even if she could see it.

"So if we're going to do this, you've gotta lead. Unless you want me to strip you of the last vestiges of your masculinity. In which case, I'm happy to."

He glanced anxiously at the other occupants of the dance floor. It was almost exclusively Earth Kingdom. His fellow tribesmen were at a table full of empty sake bottles, about half of them laughing raucously at some joke his father had just told. The other half were rolling their eyes. Most of the Fire Nation citizens in attendance were diving into the dessert buffet or filling up their drinks, happy to sit this one out.

"Lead?" he asked nervously.

"You're the one who wanted to dance so bad," she shrugged. "So dance with me."

The pairs around them were standing very close to each other, with the men putting one hand on the waists of the women and the women putting one hand on the shoulders of the men. Their other hands were clasped and held high. Arranged that way, they moved in small little circles in time with the music.

It looked really boring, and not at all the sort of thing that Toph was into.

With a frustrated sigh, he grabbed her hand and yanked her flush against him.

"Fine," he muttered grumpily into her hair.

* * *

"Weddings are amazing!" Ty Lee giggled, doing an exaggerated pirouette in her Kyoshi uniform.

"I guess I've been to worse," Mai intoned flatly. "Aren't you supposed to be honor guarding or something? Wouldn't want anybody to attack while the Avatar is getting–"

"Oh! Well, I thought it might be okay to just come over for a second and say hi." Ty Lee smiled hopefully, craning her head toward the dessert table, "And… maybe have a piece of cake?" Noticing the empty platter upon which the flawless cake had once triumphantly stood, the Kyoshi Warrior's face fell.

"Um… never mind," she sighed.

The Fire Lady pulled a plate with an enormous slice on it out of her sleeve without a word.

"Weddings!" Ty Lee squealed.

* * *

This was it. She had to do it, if it was going to work at all. She had him more or less alone, dancing this boring dance when there was actual fun to be had elsewhere, and it wasn't an opportunity she was going to waste. Sokka was droning on about how irritating formal events were becoming, and how he just wanted to get away for awhile. He wasn't so drunk as to be incoherent, but just tipsy enough to think her proposition was a good one.

She couldn't have come up with a better moment if she'd planned it this way.

"Why don't we just run away?" Toph blurted into his chest, just a little too quickly, covering up her enthusiasm with a laugh.

"Aren't we a little old for that?" he chuckled. His mild response to something she'd hoped he'd find exciting, or at least hilarious, annoyed the nerves right out of her. She _was _trying to help him get out of this funk, after all. To avoid giving away her plans, she'd spent the past week in Ba Sing Se doing lame lady things with Katara instead of having fun with the one person she'd missed the most over the past year.

He was _going_ to appreciate this, or she'd pound him.

"What makes you think I'm joking about this?" she squeezed his hand much harder than was entirely necessary for the dance.

"Owwww," he whined, trying to pull away. She reached the hand that had been on his shoulder up behind his neck and pulled him down to her level.

"I need to do something that's not technically legal," she said in a low voice. "I need your help, and I need to be away from Twinkletoes and Sweetness to do it."

His heart skipped a beat, then accelerated.

"So why bring me along?" he whispered. "Other than for my scintillating personality, obviously."

She continued as though he hadn't said anything at all. "I have some plans for a new type of metalbending, but to do it need a certain type of metal that I can bend like a whip. It's gotta be really strong, but really flexible at the same time. I've only ever found it once, and I only have a little bit left."

After a quiet gasp, his breathing quickened.

"See… I need more of it than I have so I can figure out what it's made of and make more."

Through the floor, she could feel his heart thrumming so hard that it was hard to believe no one else in the room did.

"That is," she smiled, "if the materials can even be found on earth."

"Toph…" the tone of his voice, meant to sound like a warning, was filled with so much desperate excitement she could taste it.

It tasted delicious.

The words felt like butterflies in her mouth, so she just let them fly.

"So, Sokka… how do you feel about a little coastal salvage operation?"


End file.
